Of Pearls and Mayonnaise
by histrybuf
Summary: So why WAS it that Jack Sparrow was so obsessed with the word “eunuchs”?


**Disclaimer: **No, I don't own any of this. Disney has it all. Sigh

**Summary: **So why WAS it that Jack Sparrow was so obsessed with the word "eunuchs"?

**Of Pearls and Mayonnaise**

**By Histrybuf **

There was no rum involved, that was the problem. Jack was in good health, riding easy in his makeshift hammock twenty feet above the dark Barbados street, and listening to the gentleman below threaten him with the worst violence that one man could offer another. But a good tot of rum would have made the listening easier.

All in all, he thought the word for the evening was _interesting_. He had given exactly the right amount of credence to the lady (a real lady, that!) when she had promised him her eternal love. But he had trusted just a bit too much in drunken whisper that her husband would not be home until after midnight. At least she had fed him dinner.

But Jack Sparrow was nothing if not quick-out-of-a-window, and so they had come to the situation of the present. Jack sneaked a peek below. The gentleman was rooting through piles of garbage, as if to find his rival under a stray banana peel. Lubbers. You couldn't trust 'em for much, but you could pretty well count on 'em not to look _up._ A skilled man at reef and sail, Jack had simply scaled a building and improvised his present resting place from clotheslines and laundry. Now he swung comfortably in the tropical breeze.

Finally the gentleman took his hunt elsewhere, and his voice faded into the distance.

A pleasant night. An altogether pleasant night. And a berth more comfortable than the lady's over-perfumed bedchamber had been. In fact, Jack thought, he was as safe and comfy as he had been these last six weeks. If only there was a bottle of rum to keep him company. It would do to spend the night here.

He did not, however, remove his boots.

The breeze blew and the hammock rocked. Inside it Jack, the pirate, dozed, started, and dozed again. He dreamed of the lady's bedchamber, of her pearls, spilling out of the jewel case, the round white pearls rolling on the floor. He tossed uneasily. Mayonnaise at dinner. There had been mayonnaise at dinner.

And then with a start he was wide awake, clutching the hammock, barely suppressing a cry. Some things came back to haunt a man, no matter how safe his present berth.

Six weeks ago, it had been. Six weeks ago he had needed to get to Haiti on business, and, being without transport, had signed on a French merchant as a common seaman. The French had better food than most, being the people who had invented croissants and mayonnaise, and Jack had heard the ship's cook praised in passing. So he had signed the book, and kept his sleeves down over his brands and scars. He didn't speak much French, and the crew were a quiet lot. His pistol and compass stayed in his ditty bag, and he kept himself to himself.

Two days out of port he found out the worst. The crew were quiet because of the captain. The captain enjoyed pain.

Jack had never liked sailing under another's command, not since that brief stint in the Royal Navy, and he had never liked saluting. But, two days out of Panama, the captain had ordered ten lashes to the purser's mate for "lack of proper respect", and they had all been gathered on deck to watch. It was horrible, as always, the screams, the blood. But then the man had been ordered back to his berth, not to the surgery, and told to be on his watch at six bells.

"'S like to kill him," Jack had remarked to one of his fellows. The man had ducked his head, and then the captain had bellowed "who speaks?", and Jack had found it circumspect to duck his head as well. That didn't sit well. Not well at all.

He couldn't help snooping. It was in his nature. Even when the cook was beaten for burning the captains eggs. Even when one of the tops'l men was bound to the grates and branded for being late to watch, Jack couldn't help keeping his eyes keen out for an opportunity. Especially now that he was looking to jump ship, not at Haiti, but at the earliest sight of land. And so he had found out the captain's secret.

He knew, of course, that the captain was keeping pretty close with his cabin boy. It was common enough, for, after all, what was a cabin boy for but a little quiet amusement? But, given the captain's tastes, it had rubbed him wrong that the boy had all of his body parts, so to speak. Far from being scarred and scared, the boy was the _least_ cowed of a cowed lot. So Jack had given his last guinea to the carpenter's mate, and set himself up at a convenient knothole, behind a ruined barrel and next to the captain's cabin, for a quiet look-see.

Oh, he had seen! He had seen it all. For by the light of candles, the captain's body showed the marks of the gelder's knife, and Jack found out that the cabin boy had the upper hand in _that_ relationship.

It was the carpenter himself who had missed the broken barrel, and Jack had heard the frightened voice of the mate, and it didn't take a great deal of French to hear "Spilling his bleedin' guts" out of what was being said. And then... Well, there just aren't that many places to hide on any ship. Jack knew them all, and of the one-and-a half available on _this_ ship, neither was available. He spent the night in the brig, kicking the carpenter's mate and trying to think. At dawn they'd been brought on deck for the captain's "justice".

The purser's mate had been first, bowed backward over a gun, trousers down, when the curved knife was brought out. He wouldn't watch, he'd think, Jack would. At least that was what he'd told himself. But he had watched. He's seen the knife, and heard the shrieks and the pitiful moaning, and seen the knife in the captain's hand rise and fall, and the carpenter's mate's most precious jewels rolling on the deck like pearls. And he had been next.

Well, he _had_ been next. But luck, or fate, or the Lady of the Sea (or perhaps his own delicate stomach) had caused Jack Sparrow to lose his lunch on the man holding him. And in the moment when the man recoiled, Captain Jack Sparrow, lately of the Black Pearl, currently seaman of the French ship _Noir Amour, _with his ditty bag hanging from his belt, had leaped for the rail, not caring if there were land in sight or no. And since he could swim, and not one sailor in a thousand could, he had got away with nary a scratch to show.

Useful, that had been, a very instructional swim. If you fill your water-logged boots with air, they can keep you afloat for days. As long as there are no sharks. Jack had always felt that he had a professional kinship with sharks, but was happy not to test it.

But there were still the nightmares.

Laying in his hammock, in the warm Barbados night, Jack watched the stars. The carpenter's mate had not jumped ship. He had stayed and met his punishment, all legal by the captain's law. And now the mate was – where? On ship, signed on for years, with his pay and his place, and without those things that made a man a man. And Jack swung here in freedom, whole and well. He'd missed the lady's pleasures on this night, and her husband had promised to geld him, but it had all turned out in the end. He'd meet another lady on another night, and still have all the things needed to do his duty by her.

Jack settled his ditty bag under his head for a pillow. He'd sleep this night, bad dreams or not. Drowsiness was already claiming him. He hummed a little under his breath...

"A pirate's life for me..."


End file.
